The Distinctive Home: A Vision of Timeless Design

Rating:
Summary: Don't buy it if you suffer from serious house-envy...
Review: ...if you are the sort of person who dreams of building your perfect house some day, this book will give you conniption fits, and leave you absent-mindedly drawing little floor plans on napkins in restaurants.

Eck's framework for the book cites four sources of great design: siting the house on the property, floor plans, exterior (elevation) and final details. This makes the book more balanced than those that just focus on, say, the floor plan and finish.

I found his discussion of the 'massing' of the house to be fascinating. It went a long way towards explaining why the too-large floor plans of the usual suburban house today--although in many cases just traditional layouts blown up by 50%--just don't look quite right.

That said, the book is predominantly oriented towards relatively empty-nester second homes in relatively rural locations. With some pleasant exceptions, these are not houses for people who have to, say , wonder where to store the dirty soccer equipment or the snow blower, or where their kids model collection is going to go.

They ARE beautiful, though - I swear that some day I'm going live on p.l07!!

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful !
Review: Another high-quality, gorgeous book from Taunton Press, a company that I remember from its inception when I lived in Newtown, Connecticut!

This book is full of countless beautiful color photos and drawings that add immensely to the author's viewpoints and to his descriptions of the components of a distinctive home.

Eck discusses every aspect of a home: siting the house; the roof; the landscaping, and everything in between. He overlooks no detail that will aid homeowners in deriving a sense of satisfaction from their homes. The homes he describes are livable and comfortable.

I especially liked reading Eck's four elements of a "pleasing" house and the significance and importance he attaches to each element.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I really enjoyed looking at the pictures and picturing in my head what those ideas could look like in my area.

Rating:
Summary: Great for new construction
Review: This is a beautiful book, with wonderful photographs and helpful diagrams. Mr. Eck tackles topics I have not seen discussed in depth before, including how to build a house so that it suits its site as well as the neighborhood, why we should think outside the box, and how to go about doing that. If you are looking at building a house, this is one book you should definitely get your hands on, or you'll kick yourself later when you read it.

That said, there is one point I am particularly disappointed with:

Mr. Eck states repeatedly that the same principles hold true for subdivision lots and houses as for the oceanfront and large lots that make up the vast majority of the photographs and case studies in this book. I would find this to be a bit more believable if a subdivision house on a subdivision lot was actually shown. I looked through this book, intent on finding a picture or case study of a subdivision-sized lot with a house like mine (1300 square feet). I could not find a single picture. There was one house shown that is on a small lot but it's not exactly in a subdivision; it's surrounded by large, stately houses.

I'm well aware that my house is smaller than average but I was frustrated at the total exclusion of the kinds of homes that a million Americans buy every year. Surely there is something that could be done to make our houses distinctive, too, but apparently not anything that was good enough to make it into the book.

Nonetheless, the ideas in this book can be applied to any new construction in order to make the most of what's available. People looking to renovate should probably look elsewhere, unless they're interested in a ground-up kind of change, as many of the most helpful suggestions (designing the floor plan around your life, redefining rooms, etc.) won't apply without such significant changes.

I will recommend this book heartily to the patrons at the library where I work, especially if they're building, but almost everyone will find the pictures alone are worth a browse.

Rating:
Summary: Great for new construction
Review: This is a beautiful book, with wonderful photographs and helpful diagrams. Mr. Eck tackles topics I have not seen discussed in depth before, including how to build a house so that it suits its site as well as the neighborhood, why we should think outside the box, and how to go about doing that. If you are looking at building a house, this is one book you should definitely get your hands on, or you'll kick yourself later when you read it.

That said, there is one point I am particularly disappointed with:

Mr. Eck states repeatedly that the same principles hold true for subdivision lots and houses as for the oceanfront and large lots that make up the vast majority of the photographs and case studies in this book. I would find this to be a bit more believable if a subdivision house on a subdivision lot was actually shown. I looked through this book, intent on finding a picture or case study of a subdivision-sized lot with a house like mine (1300 square feet). I could not find a single picture. There was one house shown that is on a small lot but it's not exactly in a subdivision; it's surrounded by large, stately houses.

I'm well aware that my house is smaller than average but I was frustrated at the total exclusion of the kinds of homes that a million Americans buy every year. Surely there is something that could be done to make our houses distinctive, too, but apparently not anything that was good enough to make it into the book.

Nonetheless, the ideas in this book can be applied to any new construction in order to make the most of what's available. People looking to renovate should probably look elsewhere, unless they're interested in a ground-up kind of change, as many of the most helpful suggestions (designing the floor plan around your life, redefining rooms, etc.) won't apply without such significant changes.

I will recommend this book heartily to the patrons at the library where I work, especially if they're building, but almost everyone will find the pictures alone are worth a browse.

Rating:
Summary: Top notch design book
Review: This is far and away the best book I've seen for people contemplating building or remodeling a home. Truly innovative designs that fall somewhere outside the traditional box of thinking in terms of floor plans and details create truly distinctive homes. A great place to start if you're considering major changes in your home.